“Enchanting Snowflakes” Christmas Installation designed by AaaM Architects

Recycled Bottles Turned Hong Kong Starstreet Precinct Into “Enchanting Snowflakes” Christmas Wonderland

Starstreet Precinct is a vibrant destination for urbanites with unique lifestyle. With a focus on community and a passion to foster a sustainable lifestyle for all, Starstreet Precinct and its tenants are collectively working to build a better future together with neighborhood and public. AaaM Architects had curated and designed Christmas installation for Starstreet Precinct last year with sustainable materials, rattan. This year, we challenge to use renewable material as our main concept to promote sustainable lifestyle with technological input.

Upcycled “Enchanting Snowflakes” brings new perspective to sustainable lifestyle
The main material of this year's Christmas installation is plastic from PET plastic bottles collected from the community, and transformed into the elements of the mini winter wonderland through 3D printing technology. Starstreet Precinct set up its “Recycle Your Bottles” initiative with 16 limited-time PET plastic bottle recycling points within the Admiralty and Wan Chai neighbourhood in June, and partnered with Hong Kong-based New Life Plastics, a Joint Venture between Baguio, ALBA and Swire Coca-Cola, to process the collected post-consumer PET bottles. Collected PET bottles were shredded and transferred to local 3D printing Dreamcubics to make PET plastic flakes into ecofriendly raw materials - rPET printing filament. After rounds of trial and error, we had remade 2210 PET plastic bottles up to 11 kilometers long rPET printing filament finally. Over 350-piece of 3D print ornaments were printed for the whole installation. At the end of the display period, all 3D print ornaments will be recycled again and remade into rPET filaments to extend the life of the material.

Icicle Chandelier with 50 3D print lighting ornaments
At the busy entrance plaza intersect Queen’s Road East and Wing Fung Street, a 7-meter-high sculpture floats on the street corner like a chandelier. The sculpture is composed of diamond-shaped grids and spreads downward layer by layer. Over 50 pieces of 3D print snowy diamonds are scattered among the diagrid as if falling snow resting on tree. The glow of snowy diamonds attracts passers-by to linger and feel the festive atmosphere, and appreciate the beauty beyond imagination brought by recycled materials.

Snowflake Pavilion lit up Star Street Entrance
Through circle packing algorithm, a spherical space composed of circular frames of different sizes is covered with translucent white 3D printed snowflakes, embellishing the gateways of Three Pacific Place on Star Street and Wing Fung Street with glowing white light. Visitors can step inside the 3.5-meter-high spherical pavilion and immerse themselves in this sky of falling snowflakes. After walking out of the Snowflake Pavilion, you will find that the diamond-shaped decoration suspended next to it leads people all the way to the entrance of the lobby. The little lights in the diamond frame are covered with 3D printed lampshades with snowflake patterns.

“Infinite Recycling Loop” demonstrated new typology of Sustainable Installation
Since 2016, AaaM Architects have been focusing on sustainable development and environmental design, and have experimented different design approach in various projects. From the zero-wastage recycling method, community co-creation installation projects, recycle and re-adaptation of the installation, to the use of recycled materials to form large-scale installations and then transform them into usable products after dismantle, and recently, to combine technological input in regenerate raw materials, then 3d print them into components for large-scale Installation, we believe that this new “infinite recycling loop” could provide new insight for the commercial sector in fusing arts, technology and sustainable lifestyle together for the coming future.

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